The first ceratopsian dinosaur from South Korea

Abstract

In 2008, a new basal neoceratopsian was discovered in the Tando beds (Albian) of Tando Basin in South Korea. It represents the first ceratopsian dinosaur in the Korean peninsula and is assigned to Koreaceratops hwaseongensis gen. et sp. nov. Autapomorphies of Koreaceratops include very tall neural spines over five times higher than the associated centra in the distal caudals, and a unique astragalus divided into two fossae by a prominent craniocaudal ridge on the proximal surface. A phylogenetic analysis indicates that Koreaceratops is positioned between Archaeoceratops and all more derived neoceratopsians, and the elongation of caudal neural spines was an important derived character in non-ceratopsid neoceratopsians. The very tall caudal neural spines in Koreaceratops, Montanoceratops, Udanoceratops, Protoceratops, and Bagaceratops appear to be homoplasious, suggesting an independent adaptation, possibly for swimming. Skeletal evidence suggests that obligate quadrupedalism occurred gradually in neoceratopsians progressing from bipedal through facultative quadrupedalism, to complete quadrupedalism in Coronosauria.

Keywords

Basal neoceratopsian Koreaceratops hwaseongensisTando beds Late Early Cretaceous Hwaseong City South Korea

Communicated by Robert Reisz

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00114-010-0739-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Notes

Acknowledgments

We thank J-H Kim for illustrations. Many thanks go also to Dr. Tereschenko for kindly providing their published papers to us. Two anonymous reviewers are thanked for the constructive comments on the original submission of this manuscript. The support and cooperation of Hwaseong City is gratefully acknowledged. This research was supported by Hwaseong City Cultural Foundation and the Basic Research Project (No. 10-3111) of the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) funded by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy of Korea to the first author.

Online Resource 2Character-taxon matrix (21 taxa, 136 characters). Data matrix is compiled by adding three new characters (char. 134–136) to a NEXUS version of the matrix of Makovicky and Norell (2006) and Makovicky (2010) (PDF 18 kb)

References

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